Chalkboard Thoughts

  Kathy Kohm was not the only young girl assaulted and murdered in Spencer County in 1981. We remember her because she was so like us and because she was missing for two months and because we had held out so much hope. We remember her because her death broke our hearts. But there was another girl murdered just a few miles away from Santa Claus, Indiana that Fall.     When you’re young and impulsive, running away seems like a solution to all your problems at home.  Sometimes you are just restless and bored and longing for freedom. Sometimes home is too dangerous a place for you to stay.     In November of 1981, two teens decided to run away from their Cincinnati homes. Their reasons for running away were their own. Very little of their story was reported in the papers.     They headed West out of Ohio on November 12, 1981 towards adventure and a life away from what they had grown up with.  Marie Bridgette Donae...

      While being questioned in Boonville, as a crowd was gathered outside the jail,  Hashfield did not admit to raping or killing Avril.      It was a small town and investigative mistakes were made that would not happen today. Police allowed Avril’s father to question Hashfield directly.  Hashfield ended up with a black eye.     Hashfield would later tell investigators that he saw her on the square and helped her pick up some pennies she had dropped.  He said she asked to go for a ride.  He eventually said he took her to Grandview, Indiana and threw her in the river.       State Police Officers would take Hashfield out a side door surreptitiously so that they could drive him to Grandview and point out the place where he “threw her in the river”.  They found bloody evidence on the shore and brought in boats and dive teams.     On Wednesda...

  Chapter Three    Who was Emmett Hashfield and why did police go to his house so soon into the investigation of a missing child?      Emmett Oliver Hashfield was born April 4, 1907 in Cloverport, Kentucky according to his WW2 draft card.  (Curiously his death certificate lists his birth date as March 4, 1907.) Cloverport is a small rural town on the Ohio River. The closest large town is Owensboro.    According to a 1962 article he first went to jail for child rape in 1927.      In July of 1928, he is said to be a married man but he and a married woman and her three year old child were caught trying to flee from her husband in a boat on the Ohio. Because of the three year old child, prosecutors considered a Mann Act Charge based on his previous history. In August of that year, he and another inmate set a fire in their cells at the Rockport Jail.  He was then transferred to another jail.   ...

    The newspapers that week were filled with stories of Francis Gary Powers and his U2 spy plane. He had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May of that year and was being held for spying.      The Rome Olympics would be starting on August 25th, 1960 and sports fans were following that news as well.      Avril had gone on the birthday errand on Tuesday morning around 9:15.  It was a walk that should have taken less than a half hour.  Her mother was concerned enough at 10:30 to start phoning all the shops she thought Avril might have gone in or passed.  By noon she had called the police and neighbors and friends were looking.      On Wednesday August 17th the newspapers in Indiana would be filled with stories of Avril.  Her case was highly unusual in that Avril’s killer would be caught before Avril was ever found. It’s not clear what led the police to Emmett Oliver Hashfield’s...

  When Kathy Kohm was murdered in 1981 people often commented that this type of thing never happens here in Southern Indiana.  We had a safe place to live.  And for the most part, we did.  But, something like this HAD happened only a couple of decades before.  Everyone had just collectively forgotten.  Maybe it was too awful to talk about; too horrible to remember. It wasn’t spoken about.  My Mother grew up 15 minutes away and lived all her life thinking this was just a fictional scary campfire story. Kudos to my grandparents for not talking about it in front of their kids. In 1981 or the years afterward; it’s odd to me that it never came up.     Her family called her “Honey”. Her actual name was Avril Terry and she loved animals. She had two tiny pet chameleons that clung to her everywhere she went that year. She was the middle child. She had an older sister and a younger sister.  They had moved to Boonville just two years bef...

  Chapter 23     Public outrage over the case was intense. People were deeply affected by Kathy’s murder and many felt that the police had botched the case. In 1986 a local Evansville television station, WEHT Channel 25,  tracked down the 1981 Mazda 626 that had belonged to Gash.  They wanted to get a mechanic to take it apart to look for any trace evidence of Kathy.  They specifically were hoping to find a piece of her jewelry, or blood, or a fingerprint, anything that would definitively place Kathy in that car on the day of her disappearance.  The car had been sold several times. Finding it was no easy feat. The Mazda was finally tracked down in Cincinnati, Ohio.  The new owner agreed to rent the car to the tv station and allowed them to have it examined by a mechanic.  The mechanic took the interior of the car apart and searched in detail. The mechanic found a few hairs and some fibers.  The articles written about this even...

    Chapter 28      What did Gash do in the eighteen years since Kathy Kohm’s murder?  He lived south of Atlanta in Hampton, Georgia for a time and later in Melbourne, Florida and Indian Harbor Beach.  Did he simply never offend again?  He wasn’t on parole.  He had no parole officer to report to each week.  He had no convictions on his record.  He wasn’t on the sex offender registry.  He did not have to disclose anything about this incident to his new neighbors in the towns that he resided in in the 1990’s. He could go anywhere and do anything.     Is there still a chance to get a DNA profile of the perpetrator in Kathy’s case? Did investigators clip her fingernails in 1981?  If not, could there still be DNA evidence under her nails?  That would involve disturbing her grave with an exhumation.     Can they retest her clothes?  Testing does not take nearl...

Chapter 27     Weeks later the answer came back from the lab. The biological material on Kathy’s clothes was found to be too degraded to get a full DNA profile of the perpetrator. Maybe it was too old.  Maybe it had been stored improperly.  Maybe there was just too little there to test.  For investigators it all came down to the bitter realization that they just could not get a good DNA profile with what they had and therefore could not make the necessary comparison.     Investigators were crestfallen that they would not have an answer once and for all.  Kathy’s family, friends, and everyone who had searched for her were likewise disappointed.  Everyone who prayed and followed the news and hoped for this day would never get the justice that they wanted.     We all want a simple story. We want a story to be cut and dry.  We want the bad guy to be caught and punished.  We want justice for those who have...

  Chapter 26     In 1999, Rosemary Kohm was interviewed as part of an article looking back and remembering Kathy.  She said that she had been so angry for so long.  She had to find ways to keep the anger from ruining her life.      The Jonbenet Ramsey murder investigation was dominating the headlines at the time. Rosemary was asked about the case. She felt that the Ramsey’s should be more open with law enforcement.  She said when Kathy disappeared that she let a Park Ranger from the nearby Abraham Lincoln boyhood home search every part of their home.  He went through Kathy’s room looking for any small clue.      When asked if she had forgiven Stanton Gash, Rosemary said that she had not. She said that she would shoot him herself if she thought she could get away with it.       On October 9th 1999 Kathy Kohm would have turned 30.  But she didn’t turn 30....